Review Blog

Feb 27 2013

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Definitions, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-849-41566-8.
(Age: Teens) Recommended. In just one day anything could happen.
Allyson has lived a sheltered life for as long as she can remember;
she has never done anything dangerous or rebellious. That is until
she travels to Paris with a strange boy for just one day. Allyson
rebels, loves and losses all in one day. Exhausted both emotionally
and physically she returns to America in a state of severe
depression not knowing whether she had made the biggest mistake of
her life or not. She is not the happy collage student her parents
had expected her to be and despite this she pushes herself to live
up to their high expectations and forget about her day in Paris. It
is nearly impossible to do so. She soon decides to return to Paris
during the summer break. Her parents are horrified to learn that
their obedient daughter had gone to Paris without their knowledge
and refuse to sponsor her trip. Allyson is forced to work her way
for the first time in her life. She feels drained but alive. But
finding a boy with only a description and a common name is much
harder than she expects.
Just One Day is an enlightening novel about taking chances and
growing up. Set across continents in Europe and America and
centering around two of Shakespeare's plays As You Like It and The
Twelfth Night the novel is both informative and engaging.
With multiple sub-plots and codas this well written novel is a
heartbreakingly compelling read which I would recommend to fans of
romance fiction.
Kayla Gaskell (Student).